Replies

WOW..... This is HUGE!!!

Cut & Paste

People in the Baltic states cannot feel secure. Russian President Vladimir Putin has a plan he has been working on for over a decade. So says former adviser to President Putin, Andrey Illarionov.

Giving a presentation at a conference in Palanga, Lithuania, Illarionov, who advised Putin on economic policy in 2000-2005, referred to a question that was raised in the recent Riga Conference 2014: Can people in Riga sleep peacefully at night?

“The same question could be raised in Tallinn, Vilnius, Palanga, Bucharest and other cities. No one in Riga could reply to it in the positive,” Illarionov said. “From my side, though, the question should be rephrased, especially after Barack Obama visited Estonia and said that NATO was prepared to defend Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius. The situation seems safer after the statement, but we must look at military readiness, military equipment at hand, not words. From the point of view of military readiness, NATO forces in the Baltics are insufficient.”

Illarionov says that the West already failed the test in Kiev, Donbass and Crimea. Ass long as an aggressor is not subjected to the full force of economic and military sanctions, no one can sleep peacefully.

“We are talking about a crisis in Ukraine. But such a definition is already a victory of Putin’s propaganda. An achievement of the Kremlin’s information war. It’s not a crisis, it’s a war. And, at the very least, a Russian-Ukrainian war,” says Putin’s former adviser.

Preparations running back a decade

According to Illarionov, Russia has been preparing for a major war at least since 2003 and for a confrontation with Ukraine and capture of Crimea, since 2004, when the ‘Orange Revolution’ started in Kiev.
Another contingency plan was drafted for 2010, in case Yulia Tymoshenko had won presidential election and not Moscow-backed Viktor Yanukovych. One more potential date for a war was chosen in 2015, according to Illarionov, when Ukraine would hold a presidential election. However, the Maidan happened sooner.

According to Illarionov, Putin himself mentioned plans in Ukraine that same year in a NATO summit in Bucharest - he said that Ukraine was not a real nation, but a state that took over lands that historically belonged to Russia as well as Hungary, Poland and Romania.
The current Ukrainian-Russian war, Illarionov says, began on 27 July this year, when Putin started talking about the “Russian world” during a ceremony to mark an anniversary of the baptism of Slavic peoples.

Legalized aggression

According to the former presidential adviser, Russian laws essentially define four categories of ‘Russians’: ethnic Russians, irrespective of whether they reside in or outside Russia; Russian-speakers, irrespective of their nationality; all former citizens of the Soviet Union and their offspring living in the territories formerly covered by the USSR; and former citizens of the Russian Empire (pre-1917) and their offspring living in the territories once covered by the Russian Empire.

“Such a legal base allows the Russian army to protect all the Russians listed in the law. Therefore, for the Russian side, such actions of the Russian army beyond Russian borders might seem completely legitimate,” Illarionov says.
He adds that Putin thinks of the current confrontation not as world war three - since that was the Cold War - but as world war four.

“Some scholars say this is Russia’s war against the West: allegedly, the West have made many mistakes, are moving in a wrong direction and Russia is trying to defend its values,” according to Illarionov.

Per Wiki:

2014 pro-Russian conflict in Ukraine
On 4th of February 2014, before the Russian intervention in Crimea, Illarionov predicted that Vladimir Putin is going to implement a military operation to effectively establish political control over the Ukraine.[11]

In late March 2014, following the Ukrainian revolution, Russian military intervention in Ukraine, the Crimean referendum, and the Accession of Crimea to the Russian Federation, speaking to Svenska Dagbladet, Ilarionov suggested that Vladimir Putin will seek to incorporate Finland into the Russian Federation by arguing that the granting of independence to Finland in 1917 was an act of treason against national interests: “It is not on Putin’s agenda today or tomorrow. But if Putin is not stopped, the issue will be brought sooner or later.

Putin has said several times that the Bolsheviks and Communists made big mistakes. He could well say that the Bolsheviks in 1917 committed treason against Russian national interests by granting Finland’s independence”.[12]

Ilarionov also stated that in addition to Finland, there are “other territories where Putin claims to have ownership, namely parts of Georgia, Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltic states”.[12]

On June 9, he predicted that starting negotiations between the newly elected Ukrainian president Poroshenko and self-proclaimed authorities of break-away republics at the East of Ukraine would ultimately result in Russian occupation or political control over the entire Ukraine [13]

11. The Faith of Independent Ukrainian is Decided in Kremlin. Transcript from the interview, 4th February, prior to Crimea takeover by Russia. The Dallas Telegraph, (Russian) http://www.dallastelegraph.com/55414

12. a b Withnall, Adam (30 March 2014). “Vladimir Putin ‘wants to regain Finland’ for Russia, adviser says”. The Independent (London). Retrieved 30 March 2014. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/vladimir-putin-wants-to-regain-finland-for-russia-adviser-says-9224273.html

13. Cease fire means inviting thousands of new mercenaries to terrorize Ukraine http://gordonua.com/news/politics/Illarionov-Prekrashchenie-ognya-oznachaet-priglashenie-desyatkov-tysyach-boevikov-dlya-aktivizacii-terrora-v-Ukraine-26358.html